Maguire
also McGuire, Mag Uidhir, Maguier
Of Lough Erne — the lake-kingdom of Fermanagh.
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CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Maguire
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Maguire.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
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Stake your name →Motto
Justi Ut Sidera Fulgent
— The just shall shine as the stars
What does the Maguire name mean?
From Mag Uidhir — son of Odhar, 'the dun-coloured one'. The Maguires (more correctly, Mag Uidhir kings of Fermanagh) descend from Odhar, a 13th-century lord of the kindred of Lurg, north of Lough Erne. The senior Mag Uidhir line ruled Fermanagh from 1302 to 1603 — a tighter, more discrete kingdom than most Gaelic lordships, focused around the lakes and well-defended by the Erne waterway.
The history of Maguire
The Mag Uidhir kings of Fermanagh held the lakes country from around 1300 — Donn Carrach Mag Uidhir was the first formally inaugurated chief in 1302 — to the surrender of Cuconnacht Maguire's son in 1607. Their fortified seats were strung along the upper and lower Lough Erne: Enniskillen Castle on the river between the two lakes, Devenish island monastery at the Lower Erne, and Crannóg fortifications on the lake islands at MacGann and Cleenish. The name 'Fermanagh' itself — Fear Manach, 'men of Manach' — long predates the Maguires; they took it as their kingdom's name.
Cuconnacht Mag Uidhir — Cú Connacht Óg Maguire (1565–1608) — was the chief who fought beside Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell through the Nine Years' War, who was at the disaster of Kinsale, and who sailed with the Earls from Lough Swilly in September 1607. He died in Genoa within a year of the Flight, en route to Rome. The Plantation of Ulster of 1610 settled Fermanagh principally with English undertakers — by contrast with neighbouring Tyrone and Donegal which got mostly Lowland Scots — and the Maguires dispersed.
John Edward Maguire (1815–1872), founder of the Cork Examiner; Sir Thomas Maguire of Sandymount, the Irish Catholic philosopher; the McGuire Sisters, the American singing trio of the 1950s — the surname is among the most distinctively Ulster of the great Irish surnames, and Fermanagh remains today the densest Maguire county on the island by a clear margin.
Notable bearers of the Maguire name
- Cuconnacht Maguire (1565–1608) — last lord of Fermanagh, of the Flight of the Earls
- John Edward Maguire (1815–1872) — founder of the Cork Examiner
- Sir Toby Maguire — actor (b. 1975, of distant Maguire descent)